MIT Subject Listing & Schedule
Fall 2024 Search Results

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19 subjects found.

11.004J People and the Planet: Environmental Histories and Engineering

Explores historical and cultural aspects of complex environmental problems and engineering approaches to sustainable solutions. Introduces quantitative analyses and methodological tools to understand environmental issues that have human and natural components. Demonstrates concepts through a series of historical and cultural analyses of environmental challenges and their engineering responses. Builds writing, quantitative modeling, and analytical skills in assessing environmental systems problems and developing engineering solutions. Through environmental data gathering and analysis, students engage with the challenges and possibilities of engineering in complex, interacting systems, and investigate plausible, symbiotic, systems-oriented solutions. Students taking graduate version complete additional analysis of reading assignments and a more in-depth and longer final paper. 

21.01 Compass Course: Moral and Social Questions about the Human Condition
(New)

Provides an introduction to analytic inquiry and active debate about persistent moral and social questions concerning the human experience; a shared conversation on these questions across the diverse students and departments at MIT; and a collective engagement with historical and contemporary work in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The main objectives of this subject are to provide students with opportunities to begin developing and practicing the skills and habits of mind needed for lifelong reflection and conversations with others on the normative foundations of social and human life. Lectures are offered online; in-class time is dedicated to recitations, exercises, and group discussion. Limited to 18 per section.

21H.C30 Encoding Culture: Computation Methods in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Applies computational methods for manipulating and analyzing encoded media, and draws from a wide range of practices including computational linguistics, audio processing, computer vision, and machine learning. Explores what it means to digitally encode and analyze culture. Studies the history and current practice of digitally encoding text, images, audio, and tabular datasets, along with the cultural and social issues implicit in these systems. Confronts the underlying issues of what is lost and gained when we encode culture. Limited to 25.

EC.310 Creative Imaging

Focuses on film and digital photography. Develops skill in the use of chemical darkrooms, scanners, digital printers and cameras to create striking still images capable of evoking strong emotional and intellectual responses from a viewer. Emphasizes the interplay between classical chemical and digital techniques and how they can be used to control the use of lighting, color, depth, and composition in an image. Students present their intermediate assignments to the class for critical discussion; at the end of the term, they submit a substantive project presenting their own creative images for critique and evaluation.

21G.073J The Spanish Incubator

See description under subject 21L.590J.

21H.C30 Encoding Culture: Computation Methods in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Applies computational methods for manipulating and analyzing encoded media, and draws from a wide range of practices including computational linguistics, audio processing, computer vision, and machine learning. Explores what it means to digitally encode and analyze culture. Studies the history and current practice of digitally encoding text, images, audio, and tabular datasets, along with the cultural and social issues implicit in these systems. Confronts the underlying issues of what is lost and gained when we encode culture. Limited to 25.

21L.590J The Spanish Incubator

Students travel to Spain to explore the country's influence on our understanding of contemporary culture, from its role as the crucible of the international avant-garde, to its genesis of political art and writing, to its Civil War that ignited the artistic passion of authors around the world, to the exuberant liberation after 40 years of dictatorship. Readings include Hemingway, Lorca, Orwell, Neruda, memoirs of Americans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Spanish poetry of the war and repression that followed, and the films of Saura and Almodovar. Films, readings, field trips to museums, and cultural events enable students to understand the full context in which today's vibrant Spanish democracy emerged. Contact Literature about travel fee and possible funding opportunities. Enrollment limited. Application required; contact Literature Headquarters for details.

21L.591 Literary London

Based in London, explores the specific locations, history and artistic institutions that have made London a world cultural hub, deepening students' knowledge gained on site through guided readings, theater performances, visits to homes associated with major authors, guest experts, and independent "author mapping" projects with reports back to the class. Sharpens students' understanding of the complexities of international exchange and identity formation in a global age. Contact Literature about travel fee and possible funding opportunities. Enrollment limited. Application required; contact Literature Headquarters for details.

21L.592J Race, Place, and Modernity in the Americas

See description under subject WGS.247J.

21W.729J Engineering Communication in Context

See description under subject ES.729J.

21W.743 Voice and Meaning: Speaking to Readers through Memoir

Explores the memoir genre with particular attention to the relationships between form and content, fact and truth, self and community, art and "healing," coming to voice and breaking silence. Readings include works by Nick Flynn, Meena Alexander, Art Spigelman, James McBride, Ruth Ozeki, and Cheryl Strayed, with a focus on the ways in which these writers make meaning out of specific events or moments in their own lives as a way of engaging with larger questions of family, race, history, loss, and survivorship. Drawing on lessons taken from these works, students write a short memoir of their own. Limited to 18.

21W.781J Race, Place, and Modernity in the Americas

See description under subject WGS.247J.

CMS.634 Designing Interactions

Explores the future of mobile interactions and pervasive computing, taking into consideration design, technological, social and business aspects. Discusses theoretical works on human-computer interaction, mobile media and interaction design, and covers research and design methods. Students work in multidisciplinary teams and participate in user-centric design projects aimed to study, imagine and prototype concepts illustrating the future of mobile applications and ubiquitous computing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Repeatable for credit with permission of instructor. Limited to 12.

ES.729J Engineering Communication in Context

Introduces writing, graphics, meetings, reading, oral presentation, collaboration, and design as tools for product development. Students work in teams to conceive, design, prototype, and evaluate energy-related mechanical engineering products. Instruction focuses on communication tasks that are integral to the design process, including design notebooks, email, informal and formal presentations, meeting etiquette, literature searches, white papers, proposals, and reports. Other assignments address the cultural situation of engineers and engineering in the world at large. Limited to 18; preference to ESG students.

STS.021J Science Activism: Gender, Race, and Power

See description under subject WGS.160J.

STS.033J People and the Planet: Environmental Histories and Engineering

See description under subject 11.004J.

STS.053 Multidisciplinary Interactive Learning Through Problem-Solving

Interdisciplinary problem-solving at the intersection of humanities, science, engineering, and business. Team-taught face-to-face classes at multiple US and African universities connected live via Zoom. Divided into four sections/assessments: US and African histories, cultures, politics, and development relations; HASS as a problem-solving tool; STEM applications to real-life problem-solving; and introduction to summer field-class sites or exchange programs. Goal is to equip students with skills for team-based trans-disciplinary and cross-cultural problem-solving.

WGS.160J Science Activism: Gender, Race, and Power

Examines the role scientists have played as activists in social movements in the US following World War II. Themes include scientific responsibility and social justice, the motivation of individual scientists, strategies for organizing, the significance of race and gender, and scientists' impact within social movements. Case studies include atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the nuclear freeze campaign, climate science and environmental justice, the civil rights movement, Vietnam War protests, the March 4 movement at MIT, and concerns about genetic engineering, gender equality, intersectional feminism, and student activism at MIT.

WGS.247J Race, Place, and Modernity in the Americas

Students travel to São Paulo for three weeks. Examines the relationship between race and place in the formation of modern Brazil and the US through comparative analysis and interdisciplinary study. In addition to participating in class discussions on literature, film, and visual art, students visit key cultural and historical sites; interact with archives and museum collections; and, most importantly, engage in dialogue with local activists, religious leaders, community organizers, and scholars. Focusing on the work of Black and Indigenous people, particularly women, places a strong emphasis on the ways in which art and cultural activism can have an impact on racial justice issues. Taught in English; no Portuguese needed. Contact Women's and Gender Studies about travel fee, possible funding opportunities, and other details. Enrollment limited to 20. Application required.